Even More Productivity!

Moving right along here...damn, I'm good.

First of all, almost all of my art is hung! You enter my apartment by coming down a long hall, on one side of which is the bathroom and kitchen, and on the other side of which is Sarah's room. This provides a perfect art gallery, and I've got almost all of it up now.

I went out earlier this week over to lower Broadway to Uniqlo, which is where they keep the really good long underwear. Remember, I'm heading back to the Boardwalk, and we all remember those freezing spring (spring...hah) days last season. So I found two very high tech t-shirts. I can't wear anything else under the costume, you see, because bits hang out, which they frown upon. But I also found three MORE nice turtlenecks on sale, so I'm now pretty well set. And then I went to Old Navy and caved in and bought three pair of jeans and a dress. Well, totally justified...everything in the store was 30% off for one day only. So three pair of jeans and a nice kind of burnished green/bronze color shirtwaist for 72 bucks. Not bad! Then I came home and threw out ragged turtlenecks and jeans...with an enormous sigh of relief.

Thing is, I've been so broke for so long that I have a HUGE amount of trouble realizing that I actually have money in the bank and can afford to treat myself a little bit. Today, for instance, I went to the drugstore and honestly spent about $75 on myself. The major part of this was tinted moisturizer. It's gotten horribly hard to find, and for daily wear I really prefer it to actual foundation. My mantra is, the older you get, the less makeup you should be wearing. First of all, after a certain age heavy makeup makes you look somewhat desperate, and secondly, after that same certain age, it just cakes into the fine lines (oh, all right, damn you...WRINKLES) and you look ten years older than you are.

Well, Oil of Olay came out with one finally, but it's been like $39 in drugstores, which I certainly couldn't afford. But today I found it at CVS on sale for $22.99 and promptly bought two of them. Ah, the pleasure!

This trip to CVS was after a terribly disappointing trip to the movies. I have been dying to see Black Swan, because I am a lifelong ballet freak. Give me a ballet movie and I'm a happy camper. You will always find me anywhere The Turning Point is, and The Red Shoes (one of the best movies EVER). Not to mention a spectacularly wonderful documentary about the Ballets Russe de Monte Carlo, which was the first ballet company I ever saw. It's narrated by Frederic Franklin, and if you run across it (Netflix, probably) see it...it is utterly charming.

The Black Swan can only be described as The Turning Point on acid. To begin with, they dump you right in the middle of it, meaning that you have no clue of what lies behind. We have a driven perfectionist ballerina...very young ballerina, seemingly, but she can't be THAT young. Even Balanchine didn't pick 16 year olds for Odette/Odile. And she's equipped with a monster mother. And she scratches herself until she bleeds.

Well, damn it, WHY? Where is her father? Was her mother a failed dancer (there is a brief moment of dialogue which would seem to support this)? How did she start with the scratching? Again, there's a scene with Monster Mommy which seems to say it's happened before. Or, to shorten this whole diatribe...WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE?

I gave up after a scene where Nina (Portman) goes out for the evening with Mila Kunis, and Kunis puts what seems to be a roofie, or something, in her drink, at which point we go into a nice 60's montage of an acid trip. Then Portman and Kunis get into a taxi and start a lesbian flirtation and I started out the door.

What is interesting here is that everything I saw (although remember I didn't sit through the whole thing) mirrors Turning Point. In love with an older dancer? Check...although in this case, it's the choreographer. Mother with problems? Check...although played far more lightly in Turning Point. Amazing opportunity? Check. Crazy scene in bar? Check.

I suppose I'll watch the rest of it when it comes on cable. But really...I KNOW the ballet world. I studied it for years. And while there are certainly cliques and whatnot at ballet schools, and yes, you get bleeding and broken toes, eating disorders and all the rest of it...NOBODY who had been a member of the company for four years (so stated in the script) could be A. as friendless as this child, or B. allowed to go on being so self-destructive. Damn silly, the whole thing.

Tomorrow I'm going to burst on my child's bar in the glory of my new jeans, a new sweater, and pretty makeup! And, since I spent the money to buy myself an actual hair dryer (I mean with a bonnet so I can actually set my stick straight hair...even hot rollers don't work except the ones they use on Boardwalk which you can't get commercially), I can actually have curly hair! At least for about ten minutes until it collapses...

Love, Wendy